The Italian Communist Party was overwhelmingly working-class with almost no intellectual membership

Evidence

The P.C.I. was formed in the first period of widespread fascist terror. Although at Livorno it commanded delegate votes equivalent to two thirds of those of the maximalist centre, its real strength after the split proved to be far smaller. In the April 1921 general elections, the communists won 290,000 votes, while the socialists won over a million and a half. Party membership was around 40,000 in 1921, of whom 98 per cent were workers and less than per cent (245 in all) intellectuals. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 131

Categorization

• XREF: This tiny intellectual base feeds Gramsci’s later insistence that the party must create its own organic intellectuals—the core concept the reader needs for how subordinate classes build counter-hegemony. — connects to: The Italian Communist Party clashed with the Comintern long before the united front policy
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 131